Ad #5: iPod and iTunes

Obviously this is an ad for the iPod and iTunes. Not only does it show that tons of albums can be stored on a device, but it is 3-dimensional, which only adds a cool touch to it!

Ad #4: Heineken

This ad is for Heineken Beer. Can you see why this one is so clever? If not, you're in good company. It took me a little bit to see it. There is a hand reaching around the bottle from behind it's background. GIVE ME!

Palazzo Motor Home

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/3-million-luxury-camper-40-mobile-mansion-220233175.html
click the link above to read the article

Oh yeah... look at this piece of work. The Austrian company Marchi Mobile designed a luxury "camper" with a hefty price tag of a mere $3million. This 40 foot long motor home had 430 square feet of floor space before the pop-out bar is activated (which adds 80% more space). And don't worry about losing it in the dark... it is covered in glow-in-the-dark paint. Hardly a camper if I do say so myself because, well... with these accommodations, I don't think you would be spending a whole lot of time in the wild.

Ad #3: Karate

This is an advertisement for a karate school. I'm not sure where this was from.

Strategic placement is what this ad is all about. Let's put a karate dude punching the ground over a crack in the sidewalk. BRILLIANT!

PROBLEM!

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/one-year-old-tries-to-work-magazine-like-an-ipad-2583883/
click the above link to view the video and read the article


I think we have a problem here... yes, it is cute to watch a one year old baby get confused at why this magazine doesn't work like an iPad, but that right there is the issue! Are books becoming obsolete? Even a one year old is so tech-savvy that the concept of turning pages isn't good enough in comparison to swiping on an iPad. Don't get me wrong, I am an Apple lover, I love technology and all the advancements, but I also like to physically flip pages of a book. I like to sit down with a little kid and READ a BOOK. Hmmm...

Turn Steps Into Electricity

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/13/tech/innovation/pavegen-kinetic-pavements/index.html
click the above link to read the news story


          Leave it to England to beat everyone else when it comes to being green. How awesome of an idea this is... take common cement slabs for sidewalks and replace them PaveGen paving slabs. They convert energy from people's footsteps into electricity. This technology will be making it's debut at the 2012 London Olympics, helping to power Europe's largest mall.
          PaveGen paving slabs are made of recycled rubber, so they aren't even using non-renewable resources. Every time a person steps on one of these slabs, energy is delivered instantly to whatever the slabs are connected to. Excess energy can be stored for up to three days in a battery.
          "In their first commercial application, 20 tiles will be scattered along the central crossing between London's Olympic stadium and the recently opened Westfield Stratford City mall -- which expects an estimated 30 million customers in its first year," which, according to the developers, that amount of traffic could produce nearly half of the outdoor lighting needs for the mall.

Online News Survey Report

            Thirty-five responses to my survey were collected via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. I went about creating my survey by thinking about what was most important for news in general. I broke my survey up into three sections, general news, online news, and demographics.

            In thinking about different news sources, I thought before asking about online news that it would be important to see what people used on a regular basis.

That was my first question. An overwhelming percentage (77.1%) of the survey takers said they use online sources on a regular basis, followed by television (54.3%), newspaper (45.7%), radio (34.3%), magazines (17.1%), and tabloids (5.7%). My second question asked to rate each of the above sources by opinion of reliability. On a rating of 1-5, with 5 being extremely reliable, the average ratings came in as follows: newspaper came in first with a 3.82 rating, followed closely by television (3.63), radio (3.57), and online news (3.26). Magazines and tabloids fell short at 2.71 and 1.23 respectively. My third question asked which categories of news people checked most often. Each category can be checked through different sources, which I thought was important to know. 74.3% of survey takers checked national news most often followed by local news at 68.6%. These were followed far behind by regional news at 9%, international news 17.1%, and both sports and entertainment news tied at 22.9%.

            In section two, I asked solely about online news. When it comes to online news, we can pick and choose what we view. I asked what forms of online news people were drawn to for my forth question. As I expected, plain articles came in first (71.4%). Photos accompanying articles came in second although far behind (42.9%). Videos were third (25.7%), and videos accompanying articles last (14.3%). I think the most telling question of this survey was my question five, which was how often do you check news online? Not a single person said that they never check news online, while 68.6% said they check it daily. Weekly and monthly made up the remainder. This next result confused me because it repeated a part of a previous question. For question six, I asked how reliable people felt online news sources were on a whole. Previously, the result came in at an average of 3.26 out of 5. In this question, however, the result came in at an average of 3.43 out of 5. I’m not sure if this result was different because I had them thinking solely about online news or if they were comparing the sources in the first question about this. Question seven was mostly for my own benefit. I asked which major online sites people use for getting their news online. I use some of the choices that I gave, but I was curious about other peoples’ preferences. I also set an option to write in something that wasn’t listed. yahoo.com and cnn.com both tied at the top with 42.9%. msnbc.com (31.4%),  foxnews.com (22.9%), npr.org (22.9%),  huffingtonpost.com (22.9%), reuters.com (14.3%), abcnews.com (11.4%), ap.org (8.6%), theonion.com and c-span.org tied with 2.9%, fsrn.org, newsbusters.org, azcentral.com, usatoday.com, change.org, and northcountrynow.com (not major) were all write-ins totaling 8.6%.

            In section three, I thought it would be extremely important to find out the demographics of those taking my survey. Question eight asked whether the survey taker considered himself or herself a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or something else. If they chose something else, I asked them to specify. 31.4% considered themselves Republicans, 34.3% said they were Democrats, 22.9% Independent, and the remaining 11.4% were made up of write-ins of Green, “Small D Democrat” meaning not partisan, Communist, and dependent on the issues. Question nine I figured was also quite important. Considering how much we rely on technology now, I was curious to see the age ranges of the survey takers. No one aged 15-20 took the survey. The following categories came in with the following number of takers: Ages 21-24: 11 people, ages 25-29: 3 people, ages 30-34: 4 people, ages 35-39: 2 people, ages 40-44: 4 people, ages 45-49: 2 people, ages 50-54: 4 people, ages 55-59: 1 person, and age 60 or older: 4 people. My final question, question ten, separated male from female. Those who took my survey were 23 females and 12 males.

            I kind of thought it was interesting that even those older than 50 checked online news so often, females especially. I think it is kind of assumed that the baby boomer generation and those old than that try to steer away from technology as much as possible. That may be true for some, but for those who took this survey for me, it didn’t seem that way… not for news anyway. With what I collected, I learned a lot about how important news is, and how reliant people are on how easy it is to get their news from more modern sources. They still use traditional sources, albeit not as much.

Ad #2: Benjamin Moore Paint

This one is for Benjamin Moore Paint. This is hanging off the side of a building with clear rectangles which capture the gradient of colors of the sky on any particular day. Basically, this advertises that Benjamin Moore Paint comes in any color, any shade, any hue imaginable. Good idea in my opinion, but is it stretching the truth? I don't know. I haven't looked at paint samples for this brand.

Blackberry Outage

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/12/tech/mobile/blackberry-outage/index.html
http://news.yahoo.com/blackberry-outages-spread-north-america-135707967.html
click either link above to read the article


A critical network outage as part of Research in Motion is to blame for millions of Blackberry users not having any service in North America today. Other continents, including Latin America, have been dealing with this outage for a few days now.
Research in Motion (RIM) is the maker of Blackberry smartphones, and unlike other cellphone manufacturers, they handle the message traffic of the smartphones, also. The service outage started on Monday with customers in the Middle East, Europe and Africa. South America and Asia experienced difficulty with service beginning on Tuesday. The United States and Canada joined the "party" on Wednesday.
According to Research in Motion, Ltd, "A crucial link in its European infrastructure failed Monday, and a backup didn't work either. The underlying problem has been fixed, but a backlog of emails and messages has built up that the company has yet to work down."


Is this acceptable in today's day and age?

Ad #1: FedEx Kinkos

This one is for office supplies at FedEx Kinkos. What an idea... take a giant bottle of white out to make it look like it was used for paining the crosswalk. Smart people.

Advertising

In case you didn't know, I pay a lot of attention to advertising. I like to dig around on the internet to find examples of clever advertising for products. Over the course of the rest of the semester along with my beat posts, I will be posting some of these examples that I think are really worth sharing. I may not agree with the use of some of these, but the ones that I share will be pretty creative and clever. I hope you enjoy :)

Local Event News Story

Rest Peacefully, Steve Jobs

A graphic design student at the Polytechnic University School of Design in Hong Kong named Jonathan Mak Long edited the known Apple corporation logo into the ultimate tribute to the late Steve Jobs. Jobs passed away the other day after a long fight with cancer.

Questionable Advertising

I saw this ad on the back of a tractor trailer this weekend in NYC. I don't know about anybody else, but this advertisement for Michael Jordan's cologne says to me: "with this cologne, you too can smell like the back of Michael Jordan's head."

Complaint of the Day.

Why has it become the social "norm" to have a DSLR camera? It is completely pointless unless you have a clue about how to use it. I am sitting here at a college football game, and this woman in front of me has a Canon DSLR. Of course, I snooped... she was using it on Auto... the whole time. And her lens? Did even change the zoom once.
So I ask myself, "self? Why did she spend $700+ on a camera she is only going to use one setting of? She could have gotten a point-and-shoot for $100 to do the same thing that she's doing right now."
I see it at work all of the time. I am the go-to person for camera questions. How I got this task? I have no idea. But anyway, countless times, I've gone over to our camera display and people ask me to compare two or three cameras for them. It baffles me when people have me compare 2 point-and-shoots with a DSLR. In my opinion, if you need to ask the difference between a point-and-shoot and a DSLR, you don't deserve a DSLR. Maybe that's just me.
I make sure that I ask what they are going to be using it for. That's a big one. If you're just going to be snapping pictures to snap pictures, get a point-and-shoot...